What is the title of your latest release?
DOLL BABY
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Think: girlhood, heartbreak, hedonism, and self-inflicted chaos. Doll Baby follows Jolie from fifteen to twenty-five as she navigates relationships, friendships, ambition, and the complicated process of becoming herself.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
A lot of it was based off my own experiences growing up in Los Angeles.
Would you hang out with Jolie in real life?
Definitely! We’d be at Chateau Marmont drinking dirty gin martinis.
What are three words that describe Jolie?
Perceptive, messy, magnetic.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
The importance of trusting your own voice, regardless of outcome.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Edit (constantly) as I draft…terrible. I know.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Really good, freshly baked, steaming hot bread and butter.
Describe your writing space/office!
Either a coffee shop or my couch with a candle lit and music blasting.
Who is an author you admire?
Emma Cline. So much. I love her style. I love her brain. I think she’s so unique.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Oh. So many, but THE UNTETHERED SOUL is my first thought.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
It was a few days before my birthday and I was in shock, I think, because I didn’t believe it was actually going to happen…so I didn’t tell anyone right away! Ha.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Female fiction or psychological thrillers.
What’s your favorite movie?
I genuinely love so many movies (I studied film) so this is really tough. I loved Wuthering Heights and saw it twice. I love Emerald Fennell.
What is your favorite season?
Summer, definitely.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
With the people I love most, by the beach, with really good food.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I just finished Landman Season Two and I think about it most days…Taylor Sheridan is a genius.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Sushi.
What do you do when you have free time?
READ !!!!
What can readers expect from you next?
Something even spicier than DOLL BABY
From Emily Singer — Los Angeles-based writer, director, and founder of creative agency Elsi. Featured in Bustle and Wonderland Magazine. "Doll Baby" is her debut novel.
This novel is a fully realized work of literary fiction in the tradition of the female coming-of-age novel — lyrical, dirty, funny, and structurally built around a decade of one girl's becoming.
Jolie is wild, magnetic, and quietly brutal. There's a lyrical fatalism to her — she's in on the joke of her own self-destruction but can't quite stop it, or perhaps doesn't want to. Hungry for validation, deeply romantic, sharp enough to see exactly what's happening to her and not quite capable of changing it yet. Over ten years — fifteen to twenty-five — she moves through the sunburned San Fernando Valley and the seductive ruins of Hollywood: college dorm rooms, strip malls, rooftop parties, the arms of men who can't hold her right. She looks to relationships, friendships, beauty rituals, and the gaze of others to tell her who she is. Until, gradually and then all at once, she stops.
Singer grew up in Calabasas. "Doll Baby" carries the grain of lived experience in every sentence. She describes writing it as "a trust fall into myself," and the result reads like a diary written by someone who knows exactly how it sounds from the outside and writes it anyway. The style is cinematic and intimate simultaneously — Singer brings a filmmaker's sense of pacing and scene-making to prose that never loses its poetic charge.
Literature and Fiction Literary [ Thought Catalog Books, On Sale: January 16, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781965820216 / ]
Emily Singer is an American writer, director, and producer. She was raised in Calabasas, California. She's the founder and CEO of Elsi, a creative agency and production company. "Doll Baby" is her debut novel.
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